Comments on: AOL: Dooooooh!

By: Jeremy Dunck

Jeremy Dunck — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:10:41 +0000

psych: wrong. AOL almost certainly correlates this data based on cookies, which Tor won't help you with.

If you're browsing and accepting cookies, you're not anonymous.

Security is hard. Tor is not a silver bullet.

By: psych787

psych787 — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:08:24 +0000

This makes me sick… I personally wouldn’t want my entire google search history in the public domain – anonymous or not.

Not that I’d be affected by something like this; I use Tor so my queries don’t all come from the same IP, and thus no one could “profile” my interests, but I’m wondering how all those unsuspecting people out there who were using AOL search feel about this? OMFG is the least of it, especially for the unfortunates whose queries are now a standing joke…

By: Teddie

Teddie — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:21:59 +0000

Search Engines Web that website isn't very useful.

Managed to get the DB from:
http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/

By: mc

mc — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:33:39 +0000

There is personally identifying information there, as all data has a time stamp and link to what site they clicked through to. So for those searches above to here, John could look at the logs, get an IP address and see possibly 1000s of searches the person at that IP has done. And if they happened to leave a comment etc., as Phillip has pointed out, you would have there name.

I'm sure it would be possible to conclusivly identify about 5-10% of those AOL users if big websites did some searches on their logs for AOL referal headers. None of the major media seems to realise this is the Personally Identifying Information that AOL denies it has given out. Im sure the NYT could link thousands of AOL users who have registered with them to searches they have done - how is that not personally identifying? This is not a theoretical problem.

By: Search Engines W

Search Engines W — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:33:37 +0000

http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/

if you do not wish to download the data – someone has created an online Search Service

By: Teddie

Teddie — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:23:36 +0000

Can anyone point me to where I can still download the dataset or email it to me as it’s now officially offline.

By: Philipp Lenssen

Philipp Lenssen — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:56:03 +0000

Here's what people from the sample set search for to land at battellemedia.com (I would've removed personally identifiable information, though there wasn't any):

2006 predictions [2006-03-03 21:46:11]
class action lawsuit mircrosoft [2006-03-13 15:17:02]
tatas [2006-03-27 22:36:03]
google real estate [2006-04-25 11:45:12]
goog prospectus [2006-04-24 02:31:51]
earth google [2006-05-01 01:59:59]
first time models [2006-03-01 02:50:29]
predictions for 2006 [2006-03-01 18:11:42]
give me a site that will let me read books onlin for free [2006-05-25 15:39:41]
predictions 2006 [2006-03-13 14:23:42]
predictions 2006 [2006-03-13 14:23:42]

By: King Troll

King Troll — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 15:48:57 +0000

Battelle check out this guys searches. Fucking nuts bro. Do you think they are going to release my- How to Kill Battelle and, battelle address searches!???. Im just kidding bro. Is yor book on CD? It takes me 1 hour to read 20-30 pages, so thats about 10 hours per book and it only takes about 2 hours on CD. I only listen to audibooks now.

Weirdo on Aol's searches:
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo